OT - your most impressive athletic achievements

[SHOWTIME15]

 

[TruthSeeker]

Good thread idea.

My athletic peak was when I was 9 playing Farm League baseball. I was a dominating pitcher and also the best hitter on the team. I had 3 "home runs" i.e. rounding the bases due to errors; 1 legitimate triple. Then at 10 I moved up to the big boy competition in Little League and fizzled.

I've had a fair number of accomplishments since then; chess champion in high school and college, ping pong champion in grad school and pinball champion in college.

But the most memorable was probably a pick-up football game I played with people I didn't know when I was in my early 20s. Since no one knew me, they kept me in to block most every play on offense but we played man defense and my man often went out for a pass. I had 4 interceptions, all returned for touchdowns and on one of the few plays I went out as a receiver they threw a deep ball to me which I caught for a touchdown. Our team won 5-4.

 

[1960Pats]

I won my town's little league title once, too.

Only difference was I played right field.

And if you're familiar to what the position of RF means in little league baseball, I need not say more.

Right field is an important position in LL. Many of the right hand batters swing late.

 

[Pat the Pats Fan]

12 yrs old, playing my first ever round of golf with another kid on my little league team. On hole 9, a par 4, with green next to clubhouse and concession stand, I hit a 5 iron 160 yards onto the green and it rolled in. People were clapping and yelling. My friend was jumping up and down...and asked, what's that make? Gimme a 9....

 

[borisman]

I dunked a basketball while playing "New York 21" at a friends house. I'm 5'9 and could always get rim easily and dunk smaller objects but this was the first and only time I dunked in a real game on a real 10' hoop.

We also used to play pickup bball at work during lunch and I scored 10 of the 11 points, with 2 shots from about 35 feet away. I was on fire!

 

[yukon cornelius]

1) high school football - i grew late, so i was a 5' 5" 140lb WR/DB by the time my senior year rolled around.....we were good, most kids in my class didn't get a varsity starting shot until senior year......second scrimmage, coach gave me some ****, said i needed tostep up and stand out if i wanted my shot......we were old school wing-T, our WR's did a lot of blocking.....our big block play was a toss sweep where we got to line up split about 7 yds and crash down hard.....OLB/SS usually but on the FB fake, and turned to pursue the sweep just as you got there......so i came out of the huddle pumped up, coach just gave me the 'step up time' routine......i absolutely obliterated the OLB, who had me by many inches and many pounds......took him off his feet, i heard him yell 'oh ****' as he flew......went to the next level and picked up a S, play went big, an offensive guard who was just a straight up baller gave me props back in the huddle.....had a catch that day, too (which was an event for us WR's, we ran 98% of the time lol).....next day, and rest of the year, i was promptly relegated to back up duty

2) dekhockey - funny someone else brought that up.....played a ton in my 20's.....i was short, but by the time i was mid 20's was 192 at 7% body fat......i played a linesman style game, ground it out, mucked it up in front of the net, got a lot of garbage goals, ran my mouth.......had a defenseman cover a ball with his glove in the crease, so i chirped the ref for a penalty shot.....he glared at me and said fine, but you're taking it......i pulled a rush out of my ass with a hardcore deke to the backhand, back to the forehand as the goalie sprawled to cover the back and had just an easy, pretty little flip back into the top corner......

3) i teach middle school.....a few years back we were doing a fun day late in the year, we had student/staff softball going on....just a few other teachers and a bunch of male students.......another teacher pitching, asked me where i wanted it, told him mid/low in the zone, outside half of the plate.......never even felt the ball touch the bat, took it over the fence, over the trees (really big, mature hardwoods, too), over the road and into the backyard of the house across the way.......ball went well over 300'......now i've hit balls out before when we've played on our actual softball field with a 200' fence, but this was ridiculous.....we should tape it someday.....it was the talk of the school for a few days, and every once in a while an old student still brings it up lol



realistically, my favorite/best moments have been coaching.......coaching a hardscrabble high school senior to a state title, having a girl from our team win nationals (sadly did not go to that tournament, but coached her for 4 years, watched all her hard work), coaching my daughter to back to back state softball titles (and counting)......but those are the physical highlights i can think of

 

[primetime]

Was signed to play pro hockey in Europe about a decade ago. Allowed four goals on 22 shots in my first game. Had my contract terminated immediately. Never loved the sport despite dedicating my life to it up to that point and that was the last straw. Never played hockey again.

But I can tell my kids I played pro hockey, so that's something.

 

[The Brandon Five]

Back when I was playing pee-wee hockey, we got our ass kicked by that team that had that ONE kid that was really good. Like, REALLY good! We lost 8-1 and he scored all 8 goals.

Next time we faced them, the coach asked me to shadow him. Being the little ******* that I was, I also chirped him all game long. He took two penalties on me and I scored on the PP both times... we won 2-0

I had a few 5-point games, hat tricks, etc, but that's the performance I am the most proud of.

Won championships in football (played CB), hockey (center/winger), baseball (shortstop) and soccer (striker) too.

When I was 9 or 10 our hockey team went up to Montreal to play against some Canadian teams. Believe it or not, we won all of our games! I still remember them playing "We Are the Champions" after one of the games (the song had just come out). Back in those days the local teams hardly ever beat the Canadians so it was a real upset. That pee-wee team went 18-3 and lost the playoff tournament due to a 1-0 loss to a team we had already beat twice that year. (Shades of 2007 Pats...)

 

[Sfpat]

Early 30s, first time ever to play golf, never had swung a club in my life Brother in law takes me to a par 3 course. 1st hole 155 yrds, he gives me a 5 iron , tells me to keep left arm straight. I swing, hit beautiful shot 3" from hole. Tap in birdie.
Couple of holes later, I hole a 140 yd shot (after topping the tee shot) for birdie. Couple of holes later, I hole a 40 yd pitch shot for birdie. Three birdies in first 9 holes.

I get hooked on golf and game goes downhill from there.

 

[neuronet]

How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains?

 

[Nunchucks]

I've been an athlete for a long time. Soccer in high school, black belt in 2 different styles of karate, dedicated runner, and of course the free weights. However, my most impressive athletic achievement has come to me late in life.

When I turned 40, my friend convinced me to run a Spartan race. We did the Super in Barre MA. 8 miles of trail running interspersed with about 30 obstacles of varying difficulty. It was hot, but we killed it and it was a lot of fun. This led to me running the Spartan Beast in Killington VT. Up and down the mountain 3 times, for about 5600 feet of elevation, 18 miles of trail, 200 yards of swimming, burpees, log carries, sandbag carry; I don't even know how many obstacles.

So, the Spartan Beast was my most significant athletic achievement. It was crazy hard, especially for a 40 year old man.

 

[neuronet]

Most impressive for me was the first triathlon I did after having to stop for a couple of years after getting sidelined with exercise-induced migraines.

It wasn't a hard triathlon. In fact objectively speaking it was the shortest easiest tri I have ever done, didn't even have an open water swim, just a wimpy little pool swim. But to finally be able to do it after two years of excruciating migraines, to finally be able to train again, and get to the point where I could do anything like that for two hours without getting wrecked with migraine....it was an amazing feeling. I felt like I had climbed Everest.

What amazes me is that Dwayne Wade plays through migraines. I don't know how he does it. He must have a great doctor and the drugs must work for him or something. Whenever a player is out due to migraine I know sometimes people laugh, but I never do. It's brutal. It took me six months to work up to a jog.

 

[Sfpat]

Other highpoint. Little league, 12 yrs old against a flame throwing pitcher who no one on our team could hit (we were a good field, no hit team). I led off the game with a walk, then the pitcher sets down the next 17 hitters in a row (back in the day when there were no pitch limits). So its the bottom of the 6th, 2 outs losing 1-0, being no-hitted and I'm up. 1st pitch blows by me for strike one, 2nd pitch blows by me for strike two, third pitch I lay down a bunt between pitchers mound and 1st base and beat it out for a hit, breaking up the no-hitter. Next batter hits the first pitch into right field, goes into the corner. I score from first, he makes third base, game tied 1-1. Next batter hits 1st pitch into right field for a single, we win 2-1. I think my bunt must have rattled that pitcher.

 

[QuantumMechanic]

Not directly athletic, but athletic related. Same YMCA league I mentioned upstream. I believe I was 10 at the time. The Y didn't have the money (desire?) to have real refs, so coaches (of teams not playing at the moment) would be refs. The coaches were very cliquish and there were total screw jobs all the time.

Our team (which was one of the "outsiders") was playing a clique member and sure enough we were getting screwed. We had two of our best players (including me) foul out in the first half. We were down by about 10 at halftime. I wish I could remember more details about the game, but we somehow held them to one point in the second half and ended up winning by one. It was extremely, extremely satisfying.

Whole bunch of us gave sarcastic waves to the refs as they walked off the court after the game. 'Twas glorious!

 

[fightingirish595]

Won a couple golf tournaments (scrambles).

I played basketball everyday in high school. Wasn't good enough to play on the team but I didn't want to anyway, didn't like basketball enough. But I did the earn the nickname "bird" because of my 3 point shooting, and I could be a pain in the ass defensively because I'm short and could get underneath people. I used to really harass one of the kids on the are schools team

My sport though was baseball. Wasn't a great hitter probably due to my vision but I had a good eye. Never made errors in the field, but My position was catcher. I did poorly academically in high school so I couldn't play. I really wish I did though. A lot of the teams I was on sucked but I played for an all star team that won a tournament. Hit a couple balls over the fence in my life.

If there was one sport I wish I stuck with though, it would have to be soccer, it would have kept me in better shape. And it was possibly the sport I was naturally best at. I remember scoring 3 goals in the first 30 seconds of a game once when I was about 7. Even for 7 playing against bad players, I think that's pretty good. Even later in my life when I would play soccer with ky friends who are athletic but have little soccer experience such as my self, I'm just better, even though they might be better overall athletes

I Played football but never did anything special

 

[RunAmok]

Defeated the defending Pan-American gold medalist, a Cuban, at 1984 Cherry Blossom Fencing Tournament. Which also served at part of the Olympic Trials series. Recently I defeated a former Veteran World Champ 10-9 to earn a 3rd place at a North American Cup.

 

[TomPatriot]

5 x 1 hr.

I mean . . . er . . . five pushups . . .

 

[mikejd]

If I had to pick one, it would be in 2014 cycling the entire state of Vermont from the Canadian border to the Mass border solo in one day. Just because it took a lot of hard to work and discipline to be conditioned for it: Sleep, diet, fast paced group rides at 8AM on Saturdays. Riding year round in crappy weather a lot of the time.

Couple cool baseball stories, like the time I made the region All Star team as a catcher, but the coach of the AS team's son also played catcher. Guess who got moved to third base? Me, although I'd never played it before. Pretty routine stuff except for one play where a guy ripped one down the line, I made a nice backhand play, then threw an absolute seed to first to nail him. Funny thing was, next season I started to play more CF/LF because I had good speed, and we played that coach's team in the regular season. Top two teams in the league. Two of his guys came up and smoked two balls towards me in left, back to back, one down the line and one gapper. I made both plays; they were even mentioned in the write-up in the local newspaper the next day. After that inning, the other coach came over to our dugout to shake my hand and tip his cap for making those plays. Thought that was special to have that happen mid game like that. We lost the game though.

Played rugby in college to little fanfare. A two try game and solid overall tackling for a back were my most notable achievements there.

As a full time job having adult, we built a championship level flag football team, including an undefeated season. A few of us later moved to a weaker team in the lower division, coached them up a little, improved it from a team who couldn't make the playoffs up to win a title in that lower division. Currently working on going back to back with that team. I won MVP last season while playing corner. Earlier this season, I held arguably the best WR in the league catchless. Looking back, I wish I would have taken football more seriously in high school. I think it was the sport I was best at.

 

[jah]

When I was 15 I ran the 200m in 27 seconds flat. That's about it.

I'd love to join a flag football league now that I'm firmly rooted in The Real World (graduated college and hold a job).

 

[The Gr8est]

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I was an outstanding distance runner, which is surprising for someone with a short, compact build.

I raced against olympian Frank Shorter in Charleston, SC back around 1982 on the Cooper River Bridge run, a 10k race. Well, it was me and a few hundred others, as he got to start at the front of the pack and I never saw him.

What I remember the most about that race was a woman I raced against. I was probably in the best shape of my life, and if you weren't already in front of me early, then you were probably not going to pass me.

So I see this woman, much shorter than I, with a gorgeous butt, running in front of me. I decided I would park behind her for maybe a mile and enjoy the view, and then leave her in the dust.

Well the mile came and she was well out of sight by that point, but it wasn't me leaving her in the dust, she smoked me!
I wish I knew her name because she had to have been an accomplished runner to do that to me.

Early in my running endeavors I made it a point to never stop until I reached my goal, I could slow down, but not stop. Unfortunately this mindset led me to try and run through not just discomfort, but actual injury, and l got a ganglian cyst in my knee from this foolish practice. I can still run, but longer distances cause me problems.

Even with this knee I ran a half marathon in 90 minutes and 5 seconds, while limping the last mile. I would like to have been able to try longer distances but it wasn't to be.

By far my most enjoyable run was from when I was stationed in Hawaii
Every year they have the Perimeter Run, which is a six person relay race around the perimeter of Oahu, for about 135 miles, broken up into 3-4 mile segments.

We had two vans of support personnel where we could ride and rest, but certainly not sleep, between our segments. We even had a guy on a 10-speed bicycle following us in the unlit areas, and that came in real handy when I fell and lost my glasses and he was there to help me find them.

We started at 6:00 PM in the evening and finished around 2:00 PM the next day.
It was a totally awesome bonding experience well worth doing, and what better scenery to run in?